This is major news directly from Billboard.com. They're going to now start incorporating Facebook video streams or music videos into the Billboard chart rankings. T hey will start taking the streams that you're getting on official music, video releases on your Facebook pages. It has to be a business page, not a personal page.

All those views will be incorporated into the tracking, to basically put your songs on the Billboard charts eventually. They started doing YouTube views a year and a half ago or so, they're obviously doing streams. They're still doing physical sales, vinyl sales or that type of stuff. There's different things they are tracking, but Facebook is the newest to be added on to that, which is very interesting. Let me give you some details about it. So it's going to be reflected. The first charts on Billboard that will reflect Facebook data from music video streams will be on March 27th.

The tracking is going to be from the March 12 to 18 segment of the week, which is going to be reflected in the March 27 billboards. The actual tracking started March 5th. So that's good news. And basically it's saying that it's going to be on brand new, not a brand, I'm sorry, there's going to be in the official release videos on your page's not user generated. So again, what does that mean? Right. User generated means that if a user is reposting your video on their page, that doesn't really count. Or if they take your video and reuse it somehow, which is copyright infringement anyways, that's not going to count.

It has to be the video that's on your official page, has to be licensed to you. That's another thing, which is a question that I have, actually because I'm not sure if they're going to be doing this. Let’s say, because a lot of times user generated videos are considered like covers and remixes. So there is a way to properly license somebodies lyrics or the song through something like the Harry Fox agency. So if you get a license for a song to do a cover on it, can that go towards your cover or towards their song on the Billboard charts, basically the data. So if you make a song called, I don't know man, Vegetables are Healthy for you, that's the name of the song and somebody else does a cover to vegetables are healthy for you. Are you going to get streams for that?

If they obtain the proper license, if it's user generated to do on their own, it's not going to. They're saying if you have the proper license, it will. But it's something that remains to be seen. Because on YouTube, however, if people have a license to do cover videos, those streams are going towards the billboard numbers, which is interesting. And that took some months to implement on the YouTube side.. So, you know, this is going to be an ever evolving process, as it always is. But I'm excited about the fact that, you know, more and more data streams are being picked up by billboards to really, you know, quantify how many songs are out there, crushing it, you know, put it that way.

And we all know, and I'm surprised it took that long to include Facebook. Facebook has been a major, major platform for watching videos outside of YouTube. Obviously, YouTube is still number one. But, you know, I think if I'm not incorrect, at least for some articles I've looked at, you know, like a year ago, Facebook was not only one of the top search engine search engines one year which I think it was like 2017, which is a sad thing to say period about the status of where people get their information from. But Facebook was also recognized as like the second or third platform where most people watch videos at. 

So they should take video streams or music videos from Facebook and [] towards the popularity of the artist. The popularity of the single basically account for all the popularity of the song. And then, you know, run the billboard charts accordingly. So, I mean, that's the update. That's as much as I know this came out like I think two days ago. So it's fairly fresh. But again, today's Friday, the tracking starts today. So any video is going to be putting out today or going forward and its official release. You have a license to it, it is yours. You should be qualified to get a track toward your billboard chart positioning.

And the question that I will have and I will reach out to my Facebook staff, since we have an agency account, is to see that any of our clients that release songs, let's say a month ago, and it's they have it properly license, their song and all of that, does their song also start accumulating streams starting today on their videos. Because that's obviously important for anybody that has released a video. And then it's, you know, spending thousands on promoting their project on Facebook, YouTube, Instagram, Spotify, you know, everywhere else. So there's going to be a question. We're going to figure it out.

And if you guys want to know as well, you know, write the question in the comments, especially a couple of days from now, we'll figure it out. I'll be answering that. I'll probably cover that in my Indie accelerator in the live Q&A. But this is a, you know, major announcement, maybe not as major for independent artists. Because you guys got to spend a lot more to market your videos and do a lot more work to get it to the billboard chart level. But any of the clients that we handle there on the medium sized level or in any majors. This is huge because let me tell you another reason why Facebook is underpriced in terms of running ads.

And when you put your entire video on Facebook and you run ads behind it for video views, it's going to, at this point, it may even be cheaper to get views on Facebook than it is on YouTube. YouTube has significantly more significantly has increased in prices last year, put it that way by like maybe thirty percent. So this is going to be interesting for how major artists and medium sized will utilize Facebook. But notice they didn't say Instagram. I wonder how long it's going to take for Instagram to catch on to this. And I wonder how many major artists that don't really have big brands or a lot of engagement, put it that way, on Facebook.

We're gonna go to now cling to Facebook because they can get more leverage when it comes to getting a billboard chart position. This is all a game and you got to figure it out. And some people are like, oh, they're you know, they are paying for their streams and all that, Yeah. If you run an ad on your song on YouTube or on Facebook, you are paying for that marketing. I mean, you're paying for marketing period. So for people that say, oh, you're paying for this, you're paying for that. Yes. To run a business, you got to pay for marketing, promo, travel, accounting, HR, you're paying for all of that.

You're either paying employees or you're outsourcing that to another company. So at the end of the day, nothing just happens out of thin air. I’m going to leave you guys with that. Either way, this is good news. Again, let me know in the comments what you think. If you guys need to know what me and my team do, click the link in the bio or the description below. And I will see you tomorrow, as always for another day of MusicBizDaily.